Electric HGVs

[scbk]

Tom Scott's video's are always interesting, I'd never heard of this project before with the pantographs, actually seems a  good idea

 

 

 

 

[daveatdave]

too many things to go wrong such as a rta that takes out one of the pilons and shuts down the entire motorway for hours also thousands of wagons a hour will soon wear out the cables compared with maybe 100 trains per day on the railways also the electric has to come from somewhere  

[openspaceman]

10 hours ago, daveatdave said:

too many things to go wrong such as a rta that takes out one of the pilons and shuts down the entire motorway for hours

Yes it could happen but most collisions are between  vehicles and vehicle hitting crash barriers and seldom do they take down bridge abutments.

10 hours ago, daveatdave said:

 

also thousands of wagons a hour will soon wear out the cables compared with maybe 100 trains per day on the railways

I wonder what the life of a HV overhead wire is and whether the wear is related just to rubbing AND/OR current passed . When I rode a train cab diesel electric it took 2000 amps to get it rolling then very little on the move.

10 hours ago, daveatdave said:

also the electric has to come from somewhere  

This is the nub and in this case it's real time use of electricity, not off peak charging when everyone is asleep. I was not sure whether the lorries were EV with battery or had a diesel when not connected to the overhead but the figures would be interesting. Laden a 38tonne lorry gets about 6mpg, that's an impressive tonne-mile figure and about 8 times more than a typical car uses. Cars do about 5miles per kWh and have 20-30kWh batteries. So if the lorry has 100kWh battery it can do about 62 miles between leaving the overhead and getting to another charge point assuming the initial overhead running provides enough to fully recharge the battery.

 

Of course from a pollution point of view moving the power production to a centralised system is likely better than having a diesel running but from a climate change CO2 dumping position do all the production and transmission inefficiencies match the  non optimum running of a diesel in a lorry? I doubt it so somehow the electricity needs to come from a non fossil fuel source..